Background Image

...

With All Due Respect For The Wondrous Ways People Have Invented To Amuse Themselves And One Another On Paved Surfaces, I Find That This Exodus From The Land Makes Me Unspeakably Sad. I Think Of The Children Who Will Never Know, Intuitively, That A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love, Or What Silence Sounds Like, Or That Trees Breathe Out What We Breathe In.

-Barbara Kingsolver

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

With All Due Respect

Barbara Kingsolver

...

With All Due Respect For The Wondrous Ways People Have Invented To Amuse Themselves And One Another On Paved Surfaces, I Find That This Exodus From The Land Makes Me Unspeakably Sad. I Think Of The Children Who Will Never Know, Intuitively, That A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love, Or What Silence Sounds Like, Or That Trees Breathe Out What We Breathe In.

Views: 41381

Topic

More From Barbara Kingsolver

It's The Thing You Fear Most That Walks Beside You All The Time.

It Is Completely Usual For Me To Get Up In The Morning, Take A Look Around, And Laugh Out Loud.

Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly, Writers Will Go To Stupefying Lengths To Get The Infernal Roar Of Words Out Of Their Skulls And Onto Paper.

A Flower Is Your Cousin...sometimes A Person Has Got To Take A Life, Like A Chicken's Or A Hog's When You Need It...but Nobody Is So Hungry They Need To Kill A Flower. Cherokee Great-grandmother

Our Childhood Had Passed Over Into History Overnight. The Transition Was Unnoticed By Anyone But Ourselves.

The Longer You Live, The More Likely You Are To Have Something To Say.

Quit Smoking In The Hope Of Growing Old. It Takes A Long Time To Write. People Go To Books For Wisdom And Older Authors Tend To Have More Of It.

When I Look Out The Window, I Exhale A Prayer Of Thanks For The Color Green, For My Children's Safety, For The Simple Acts Of Faith Like Planting A Garden That Helped See Us Through Another Spring, Another Summer. And I Inhale Some Kind Of Promise To Protect My Kids' Hopes And Good Intentions We Began With In This Country. Freedom Of Speech, The Protection Of Diversity - These Are The Most Important Ingredients Of American Civil Life And My Own Survival. If I Ever Took Them For Granted, I Don't Know.

There Is A Strange Moment In Time, After Something Horrible Happens, When You Know It's True, But You Haven't Told Anyone Yet.

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

Downstream Is Always Someone Else's Up.

Organization Is The Religion Of The Single Parent.

The Things I Carry Closest To My Heart Are Things I Can't Own.

Ah, The Mysterious Croak. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It's The Best Reason I Can Think Of To Throw Open The Blinds And Risk Belief. Right Now, This Minute, Time To Move Out Into The Grief And Glory. High Tide.

A First Child Is Your Own Best Foot Forward, And How You Do Cheer Those Little Feet As They Strike Out. You Examine Every Turn Of Flesh For Precocity, And Crow It To The World. But The Last One: The Baby Who Trails Her Scent Like A Flag Of Surrender Through Your Life When There Will Be No More Coming After--oh, That' S Love By A Different Name.

Growing Food Was The First Activity That Gave Us Enough Prosperity To Stay In One Place, Form Complex Social Groups, Tell Our Stories, And Build Our Cities.

Pain Reaches The Heart With Electrical Speed, But Truth Moves To The Heart As Slowly As A Glacier.

When We Traded Homemaking For Careers, We Were Implicitly Promised Economic Independence And Worldly Influence. But A Devil Of A Bargain It Has Turned Out To Be In Terms Of Daily Life. We Gave Up The Aroma Of Warm Bread Rising, The Measured Pace Of Nurturing Routines, The Creative Task Of Molding Our Families' Tastes And Zest For Life; We Received In Exchange The Minivan And The Lunchable.

To Be Hopeful, To Embrace One Possibility After Another That Is Surely The Basic Instinct - Crying Out: High Tide! Time To Move Out Into The Glorious Debris. Time To Take This Life For What It Is!

We Must Surely Appear To The World As Exactly What We Are: A Nation That Organizes Its Economy Around Consuming Twice As Much Oil As It Produces, And Around The Profligate Wastefulness Of The Wars And Campaigns Required To Defend Such Consumption. In Recent Years We Have Defined Our National Interest Largely In Terms Of The Oil Fields And Pipelines We Need To Procure Fuel.

It's Very Important To Distinguish Between Innocence And Naivete. The Innocent Do Not Deserve To Be The Victims Of Violence. But Only The Naive Refuse To Think About The Origins Of Violence And To Pursue The Possibility That The Genesis Of That Hatred Could Be Addressed.

Arterial-plaque Specials That Save Minutes Now Can Cost Years, Later On.

...trust In Creation Which Is Made Fresh Daily And Doesn’t Suffer In Translation. This God Does Not Work In Especially Mysterious Ways. The Sun Here Rises And Sets At Six Exactly. A Caterpillar Becomes A Butterfly. A Bird Raises Its Brood In The Forest And A Greenheart Tree Will Only Grow From A Greenheart Seed. He Brings Drought Sometimes Followed By Torrential Rains And If These Things Aren’t Always What I Had In Mind, They Aren’t My Punishment Either. They’re Rewards, Let’s Say For The Patience Of A Seed.

Something In Me Was Always Watching Life From The Outside, Permanently Obsessed With The Notion Of Belonging Vs. Not-belonging [to A Group]. It Did Not Make For A Happy Childhood, But It Was Excellent Training For A Writer.

A Certain Feeling Comes From Throwing Your Good Life Away, And It Is One Part Rapture.

Why Is It That Only Girls Stand On The Sides Of Their Feet? As If They're Afraid To Plant Themselves?

If You Want Sweet Dreams, You've Got To Live A Sweet Life.

The Novel Is Inherently A Political Instrument, Regardless Of Its Subject. It Invites You - More Than Invites You, Induces You - To Live Inside Another Person's Skin. It Creates Empathy. And That's The Antidote To Bigotry. The Novel Doesn't Just Tell You About Another Life, Which Is What A Newspaper Would Do. It Makes You Live Another Life, Inhabit Another Perspective. And That's Very Important.

From My Earliest Memory, Times Of Crisis Seemed To End Up With Women In The Kitchen Preparing Food For Men.

If I Had To Give Up My Life For Anything, It Would Have To Have The Resilience Of Hope, The Elation Of New Literacy, The Brilliant Life Of A Field Of Flowers, The Elementary Kindness Of Bread. Nothing Short Of That. It Would Have To Be Something As Sure As Love.

Parenting Is Something That Happens Mostly While You're Thinking Of Something Else.

For If There Is Any Single Thing That Everyone Hopes For Most Dearly, It Must Be This: That The Youngest Outlive The Oldest.

I Don't Know What Rituals My Kids Will Carry Into Adulthood, Whether They'll Grow Up Attached To Homemade Pizza On Friday Nights, Or The Scent Of Peppers Roasting Over A Fire, Or What. I Do Know That Flavors Work Their Own Ways Under The Skin, Into The Heart Of Longing. Where My Kids Are Concerned I Find Myself Hoping For The Simplest Things: That If Someday They Crave Orchards Where Their Kids Can Climb Into The Branches And Steal Apples, The World Will Have Trees Enough With Arms To Receive Them.

The Way I See It, A Person Isn't Nothing More Than A Scarecrow... The Only Difference Between One That Stands Up Good And One That Blows Over Is What Kind Of A Stick They're Stuck Up There On.

God, Why Does A Mortal Man Have Children? It Is Senseless To Love Anything This Much.

We're Surrounded By Mandates, And I Believe That Literature Should Be Mandate-free. I Feel Very Strongly About That.

Everything You're Sure Is Right Can Be Wrong In Another Place.

Hunger Of The Body Is Altogether Different From The Shallow, Daily Hunger Of The Belly. Those Who Have Known This Kind Of Hunger Cannot Entirely Love, Ever Again, Those Who Have Not.

I Know People. Most Have No Earthly Notion Of The Price Of A Snow-white Conscience.

A Woman Knows She Can Walk Away From A Pot To Tend Something Else And The Pot Will Go On Boiling; If She Couldn't This World Would End At Once.

...prodigal Summer, The Season Of Extravagant Procreation. It Could Wear Out Everything In Its Path With Its Passionate Excesses, But Nothing Alive With Wings Or A Heart Or A Seed Curled Into Itself In The Ground Could Resist Welcoming It Back When It Came.

Misunderstanding Is My Cornerstone. It's Everyone's, Come To Think Of It. Illusions Mistaken For Truth Are The Pavement Under Our Feet.

Children Can Be Your Heartache. But That Doesn't Matter, You Have To Go On And Have Them . . . It Works Out.

I Struggle With Confidence, Every Time. I’m Never Completely Sure I Can Write Another Book. Maybe My Scope Is Too Grand, My Questions Too Hard, Surely Readers Won’t Want To Follow Me Here. A Novel Is Like A Cathedral, It Knocks You Down To Size When You Enter Into It.

In The Long Run, Most Of Us Spend About Fifteen Minutes Total In The Entanglements Of Passion, And The Rest Of Our Days Looking Back On It, Humming The Tune.

I Think That When People Read Fiction, They're Really Reading For Wisdom. I Am. That's What Most Of Us Really Love. If We Read A Novel That Rocks Our World, It's Because There's Something In It That We Didn't Know Already. Not Just Information But Really Wisdom - Sort Of What To Do With Our Information. And Wisdom Comes From Experience.

It's Tough To Break Yourself As News To A Town That Already Knows You.

School Is About Two Parts Abcs To Fifty Parts Where Do I Stand In The Great Pecking Order Of Humankind.

Mom Is Losing, No Doubt, Because Our Vegetables Have Come To Lack Two Features Of Interest: Nutrition And Flavor. Storage And Transport Take Predictable Tolls On The Volatile Plant Compounds That Subtly Add Up To Taste And Food Value. Breeding To Increase Shelf Life Also Has Tended To Decrease Palatability. Bizarre As It Seems, We've Accepted A Tradeoff That Amounts To: "give Me Every Vegetable In Every Season, Even If It Tastes Like A Cardboard Picture Of Its Former Self."

This Will Be Great Mam's Last Spring. Her Last June Apples. Her Last Fresh Roasting Ears From The Garden.

You Can't Really Know The Person Standing Before You, Because Always There Is Some Missing Piece

What I Want Is So Simple I Almost Can't Say It: Elementary Kindness.

What We Lose In Our Great Human Exodus From The Land Is A Rooted Sense, As Deep And Intangible As Religious Faith, Of Why We Need To Hold On To The Wild And Beautiful Places That Once Surrounded Us.

Restraint Equals Indulgence

Literature Duplicates The Experience Of Living In A Way That Nothing Else Can, Drawing You So Fully Into Another Life That You Temporarily Forget You Have One Of Your Own. That Is Why You Read It, And Might Even Sit Up In Bed Till Early Dawn, Throwing Your Whole Tomorrow Out Of Whack, Simply To Find Out What Happens To Some People Who, You Know Perfectly Well, Are Made Up.

Mr. Shepherd, Ye Cannot Stop A Bad Thought From Coming Into Your Head. But Ye Need Not Pull Up A Chair And Bide It Sit Down." - Mrs. Brown

Silence Has Many Advantages…i Write And Draw In My Notebook And I Read Anything I Please.

There Is No Point Treating A Depressed Person As Though She Were Just Feeling Sad, Saying, 'there Now, Hang On, You'll Get Over It.' Sadness Is More Or Less Like A Head Cold- With Patience, It Passes. Depression Is Like Cancer.

Your Dreams, What You Hope For And All That, It's Not Separate From Your Life. It Grows Right Up Out Of It.

The Talkers Are Rising Above The Thinkers.

Be Careful What You Give Children, For Sooner Or Later You Are Sure To Get It Back.

I Wonder That Religion Can Live Or Die On The Strength Of A Faint, Stirring Breeze. The Scent Trail Shifts, Causing The Predator To Miss The Pounce. One God Draws In The Breath Of Life And Rises; Another God Expires.

A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love.

Good Fiction Creates Empathy. A Novel Takes You Somewhere And Asks You To Look Through The Eyes Of Another Person, To Live Another Life.

Empathy Is Really The Opposite Of Spiritual Meanness. It's The Capacity To Understand That Every War Is Both Won And Lost. And That Someone Else's Pain Is As Meaningful As Your Own.

There Are Always More Questions. Science As A Process Is Never Complete. It Is Not A Foot Race, With A Finish Line.... People Will Always Be Waiting At A Particular Finish Line: Journalists With Their Cameras, Impatient Crowds Eager To Call The Race, Astounded To See The Scientists Approach, Pass The Mark, And Keep Running. It's A Common Misunderstanding, He Said. They Conclude There Was No Race. As Long As We Won't Commit To Knowing Everything, The Presumption Is We Know Nothing.

Knowing Everything

Bitter Words Normally Evaporate With The Moisture Of Breath, After A Quarrel. In Order To Become Permanent, They Require Transcribers, Reporters, Complicit Black Hearts.

Listen. To Live Is To Be Marked. To Live Is To Change, To Acquire The Words Of A Story, And That Is The Only Celebration We Mortals Really Know. In Perfect Stillness, Frankly, I've Only Found Sorrow.

When People Are Frightened About Going Hungry And Paying Their Mortgages, A Scarcity Model Begins To Prevail; They Fear Someone Else Will Get Their Piece Of The Pie.

After 'the Poisonwood Bible' Was Published, Several People Believed That My Parents Were Missionaries, Which Could Not Be Further From The Truth.

He Needs To Go Rub His Soul Against Life.

Sadness Is More Or Less Like A Head Cold - With Patience, It Passes. Depression Is Like Cancer.

Eaters Must Understand, How We Eat Determines How The World Is Used.

In My Own Worst Seasons I've Come Back From The Colorless World Of Despair By Forcing Myself To Look Hard, For A Long Time, At A Single Glorious Thing: A Flame Of Red Geranium Outside My Bedroom Window. And Then Another: My Daughter In A Yellow Dress. And Another: The Perfect Outline Of A Full, Dark Sphere Behind The Crescent Moon. Until I Learned To Be In Love With My Life Again. Like A Stroke Victim Retraining New Parts Of The Brain To Grasp Lost Skills, I Have Taught Myself Joy, Over And Over Again(15).

Nothing To Do With Nature, Unless You Count Human Nature.

If Someone Does Learn About The World From Reading A Novel Of Mine, That Makes Me Very Happy. It's Probably Not What Brings Me Into The Novel In The First Place - I Usually Am Pulled In By Some Big Question About The World And Human Nature That I'm Not Going To Resolve In The Course Of The Novel. But I'm Very Devoted To Getting My Facts Straight.

To Be Hopeful, To Embrace One Possibility After Another--that Is Surely The Basic Instinct. Baser Even Than Hate, The Thing With Teeth, Which Can Be Stilled With A Tone Of Voice Or Stunned By Beauty. If The Whole World Of The Living Has To Turn On The Single Point Of Remaining Alive, That Pointed Endurance Is The Poetry Of Hope. The Thing With Feathers.

Maybe Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, Or Any Worse, And What We Get Is Just What We're Willing To Find: Small Wonders, Where They Grow.

We Tap Our Toes To Chaste Love Songs About The Silvery Moon Without Recognizing Them As Hymns To Copulation.

We Agreed With Him In Principal - We Were Little Scientists, Born And Bred. But Children Robbed Of Love Will Dwell On Magic.

Close The Door. Write With No One Looking Over Your Shoulder. Don't Try To Figure Out What Other People Want To Hear From You; Figure Out What You Have To Say. It's The One And Only Thing You Have To Offer.

Memory Is A Complicated Thing, A Relative To Truth, But Not Its Twin.

With All Due Respect For The Wondrous Ways People Have Invented To Amuse Themselves And One Another On Paved Surfaces, I Find That This Exodus From The Land Makes Me Unspeakably Sad. I Think Of The Children Who Will Never Know, Intuitively, That A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love, Or What Silence Sounds Like, Or That Trees Breathe Out What We Breathe In.

Sugar, It's No Parade But You'll Get Down The Street One Way Or Another, So You'd Just As Well Throw Your Shoulders Back And Pick Up The Pace.

I Used To Think Religion Was Just More Of The Same Thing. Dump Responsibility On The Big Guy. Now I See An Importance In That. It's A Relief To Accept That Not Everything Is Under Your Control.

One Of The Very First Things I Figured Out About Life...is That It's Better To Be A Hopeful Person Than A Cynical, Grumpy One, Because You Have To Live In The Same World Either Way, And If You're Hopeful, You Have More Fun.

My Worst Nightmare Is Being Stuck Somewhere With Nothing To Read.

Worst Nightmares

I Could Never Work Out Whether We Were To View Religion As A Life-insurance Policy Or A Life Sentence. I Can Understand A Wrathful God Who'd Just As Soon Dangle Us All From A Hook. And I Can Understand A Tender, Unprejudiced Jesus. But I Could Never Quite Feature The Two Of Them Living In The Same House. You Wind Up Walking On Eggshells, Never Knowing Which... Is At Home At The Moment.

For Lou Ann, Life Itself Was A Life-threatening Enterprise.

The Past Is All We Know Of The Future.

Global Commerce Is Driven By A Single Conviction: The Inalienable Right To Earn Profit, Regardless Of Any Human Cost.

This Is How Moths Speak To Each Other. They Tell Their Love Across The Fields By Scent. There Is No Mouth, The Wrong Words Are Impossible, Either A Mate Is There Or He Is Not, And If So The Pair Will Find Each Other In The Dark.

If My Setting Is New To A Reader, Or The Concerns Of The Novel Are New, I Hope They Will Learn Something About The World. I Would Like To Say That They Can Trust That What They Do Learn In The Novel Will Be Accurate, Because I Pay A Lot Of Attention To Facts. I Do A Lot Of Research To Make Sure That I'm Not Giving Them, You Know, Blue Moons Of Jupiter. It's Not Science Fiction.

Being A Novelist And Being A Mother Have Exactly Coincided In My Life: The Call From My Agent Saying That I Had A Contract For My First Novel - That Was On My Answering Phone Message When I Got Back From The Hospital With My First Child.

When You're Given A Brilliant Child You Polish Her And Let Her Shine. Pigs In Heaven

When Moral Superiority Combines With Billowing Ignorance, They Fill Up A Hot-air Balloon That's Awfully Hard Not To Poke.

My Life Is A Pitiful, Mechanical Thing Without A Past, Like A Little Wind-up Car, Ready To Run In Any Direction Someone Points Me.

What Keeps You Going Isn't Some Fine Destination But Just The Road You're On, And The Fact That You Know How To Drive. You Keep Your Eyes Open, You See This Damned-to-hell World You Got Born Into, And You Ask Yourself, 'what Life Can I Live That Will Let Me Breathe In & Out And Love Somebody Or Something And Not Run Off Screaming Into The Woods?

Literature Is One Of The Few Kinds Of Writing In The World That Does Not Tell You What To Buy, Want, See, Be, Or Believe. It's More Like Conversation, Raising New Questions And Inspiring You To Answer Them For Yourself.

The Moth Settled Onto The Curtain And Sat Still. It Was An Astonishing Creature, With Black And White Wings Patterned In Geometric Shapes, Scarlet Underwings, And A Fat White Body With Black Spots Running Down It Like A Snowman's Coal Buttons. No Human Eye Had Looked At This Moth Before; No One Would See Its Friends. So Much Detail Goes Unnoticed In The World.

Black And White

The Very Least You Can Do In Your Life Is To Figure Out What You Hope For. And The Most You Can Do Is Live Inside That Hope. Not Admire It From A Distance But Live Right In It, Under Its Roof.

To Think Is Not Always To See.

... Urban Friends Ask Me How I Can Stand Living Here, 'so Far From Everything?' When I Hear This Question Over The Phone, I'm Usually Looking Out The Window At A Forest, A Running Creek, And A Vegetable Garden, Thinking: Define Everything.

Those First Few Weeks Are An Unearthly Season. From The Outside You Remain So Ordinary, No One Can Tell From Looking That You Have Experienced An Earthquake Of The Soul. You've Been Torn Asunder, Invested With An Ancient, Incomprehensible Magic. It's The One Thing That We Never Quite Get Over: That We Contain Our Own Future.

I Didn't Study Writing In School, I Studied Biology As An Undergraduate And Graduate Student. So I Think That I Write Fiction In The Scientific Way. I Love Invention, Obviously; I Love Creation Of Character. But I Do Feel Very Rooted In The Real World, Even In The Way That I Create Characters.

I’ve Seen How You Can’t Learn Anything When You’re Trying To Look Like The Smartest Person In The Room.

There Was A Roaring In My Ears And I Lost Track Of What They Were Saying. I Believe It Was The Physical Manifestation Of Unbearable Grief.

I Personally Am Inclined To Approach [housework] The Way Governments Treat Dissent: Ignore It Until It Revolts.

If Every U.s. Citizen Ate Just One Meal A Week (any Meal) Composed Of Locally And Organically Raised Meats And Produce, We Would Reduce Our Country’s Oil Consumption By Over 1.1 Million Barrels Of Oil Every Week. That's Not Gallons, But Barrels. Small Changes In Buying Habits Can Make Big Differences. Becoming A Less Energy-dependent Nation May Just Need To Start With A Good Breakfast.

Most Of The Girls My Age, Or Even Younger, Have Babies. They Appear Way Too Young To Be Married, Till You Look In Their Eyes. Then You'll See It. Their Eyes Look Happy And Sad At The Same Time, But Unexcited By Anything, Shifting Easily Off To The Side As If They've Already Seen Most Of What There Is. Married Eyes.

I Know How People Are, With Their Habits Of Mind. Most Will Sail Through From Cradle To Grave With A Conscience Clean As Snow...i Know People. Most Have No Earthly Notion Of The Price Of A Snow-white Conscience.

From The Fallen Tree Everybody Makes Firewood.

The Standard Approach Has Been To Pump Up The Dosage Of Chemicals ... Twenty Percent Of These Approved-for-use Pesticides Are Listed By The Epa As Carcinogenic In Humans.

The Friend Who Holds Your Hand And Says The Wrong Thing Is Made Of Dearer Stuff Than The One Who Stays Away.

It Is Harrowing For Me To Try To Teach 20-year-old Students, Who Earnestly Want To Improve Their Writing. The Best I Can Think To Tell Them Is: Quit Smoking, And Observe Posted Speed Limits. This Will Improve Your Odds Of Getting Old Enough To Be Wise.

She's Never Forgotten, Either, How A Mystery Caught In The Hand Could Lose Its Grace

War So Conspicuously Benefits Rich Men And Kills The Poor Ones.

This Story About Good Food Begins In A Quick-stop Convenience Market.

But Still, I’d Be Darned If I Was Going To Be One Of Those Americans Who Stomp Around Italy Barking Commands In Ever-louder English. I Was Going To Be One Of Those Americans Who Traversed Italy With My Forehead Knit In Concentration, Divining Wordsw From Their Latin Roots And Answering By Wedging French Cognates Into Italian Pronunciations Spliced Onto A Standard Spanish Verb Conjugation.

Our Plans Are Small And Somewhat Absurd.

Quit Smoking, And Observe Posted Speed Limits. This Will Improve Your Odds Of Getting Old Enough To Be Wise.

My Father Wears His Faith Like The Bronze Breastplate Of God's Footsoldiers While Our Mother's Is More Like A Good Cloth Coat With A Secondhand Fit.

My Own Relationships With The Animals In My Life Are Absurdly Complex: Some I Love, Some I Eat, And The Scraps Left Over From The Ones I Eat, I Feed To The Ones I Love.

You Know Reviewers, They Are The Wind In Their Own Sails.

I Made It To The Childbearing Phase Without Tv Dependence, Then Looked Around And Thought, Well Gee, Why Start Now? Why Get A Pet Python On The Day You Decide To Raise Fuzzy Little Gerbils?

It Feels Strange To Me To Be Living In A Box, Hiding From The Steadying Influence Of The Moon; Wearing The Hide Of A Cow, Which Is Supposed To Be Dyed To Match God-knows-what, On My Feet; Making Promises Over The Telephone About Things I Will Do At A Precise Hour Next Year.

I Live In Southern Appalachia, So I'm Surrounded By People Who Work Very Hard For Barely A Living Wage. It's Particularly Painful That People Are Working The Farms Their Parents And Grandparents Worked But Aren't Living Nearly As Well.

Plot Comes First. The Plot Is The Archictecture Of Your Novel. You Wouldn't Build A House Without A Plan. If I Wrote Without A Plot, It Would Just Be A Pile Of Bricks. Characters Are Your Servants. They Must Serve Your Plot.

It Occurs To Her That There Is One Thing About People You Can Never Understand Well Enough: How Entirely Inside Themselves They Are.

Fiction Is A Sort Of Inter-human Magic, Allowing You To Travel Into A Scene And Feel It Tingle On Your Skin.

The Daily Work - That Goes On, It Adds Up.

Inspirational Life

Be Still, And The World Is Bound To Turn Herself Inside Out To Entertain You. Everywhere You Look, Joyful Noise Is Clanging To Drown Out Quiet Desperation.

The Most Assiduous Task Of Parenting Is To Divine The Difference Between Boundaries And Bondage.

A Sound-bite Culture Can't Discuss Science Very Well. Exactly What We're Losing When We Reduce Biodiversity, The Causes And Consequences Of Global Warming-these Traumas Can't Be Adequately Summarized In An Evening News Wrap-up.

Don’t Try To Make Life A Mathematics Problem With Yourself In The Center And Everything Coming Out Equal. When You’re Good, Bad Things Can Still Happen. And If You’re Bad, You Can Still Be Lucky.

(on Asparagus) Europeans Of The Renaissance Swore By It As An Aphrodisiac, And The Church Banned It From Nunneries.

Lies Are Infinite In Number, And The Truth So Small And Singular.

I Could Never Work Out Whether We Were To View Religion As A Life-insurance Policy Or A Life Sentence.

Why Does A Person Even Get Up In The Morning? You Have Breakfast, You Floss Your Teeth So You'll Have Healthy Gums In Your Old Age, And Then You Get In Your Car And Drive Down I-10 And Die. Life Is So Stupid I Can't Stand It.

The Power Is In The Balance: We Are Our Injuries, As Much As We Are Our Successes.

Before That I Was A Scientist. I Did Research In Population Biology. And That's What I Always Go Back To, It Helps Me To Remember That People Are Not The End Of The World, Although We May Be When It Comes To It. We're Just One Species Among Millions In This World.

When The Scope Of The Problem Seems Insuperable, Isn't It Time To Call This One, Give It Up, And Get On With Life As We Know It. I Do Know That Answer To That One: That's Called Child Abuse. When My Teenager Worries That Her Generation Won't Be Able To Fix This Problem, I Have To Admit To Her That It Won't Be Up To Her Generation. It's Up To Mine. This Is A Now-or-never Kind Of Project.

In A World As Wrong As This One, All We Can Do Is Make Things As Right As We Can.

Want Is A Thing That Unfurls Unbidden Like Fungus, Opening Large Upon Itself, Stopless, Filling The Sky. But Needs, From One Day To The Next, Are Few Enough To Fit In A Bucket, With Room Enough Left To Rattle Like Brittle Brush In A Dry Wind.

Your Own Family Resemblances Are A Frustrating Code, Most Easily Read By Those Who Know You Least.

Once The Rains Abated, My Father's Garden Thrived In The Heat Like An Unleashed Temper.

Vengeance Does Not Subtract Any Numbers From The Equation Of Murder; It Only Adds Them.

Watching Italians Eat (especially Men, I Have To Say) Is A Form Of Tourism The Books Don't Tell You About. They Close Their Eyes, Raise Their Eyebrows Into Accent Marks, And Make Sounds Of Acute Appreciation. It's Fairly Sexy. Of Course I Don't Know How These Men Behave At Home, If They Help With The Cooking Or Are Vain And Boorish And Mistreat Their Wives. I Realized Mediterranean Cultures Have Their Issues. Fine, Don't Burst My Bubble. I Didn’t Want To Marry These Guys, I Just Wanted To Watch. (p. 247)

A Wife Is The Earth Itself, Changing Hands, Bearing Scars.

Sometimes The Strength Of Motherhood Is Greater Than Natural Laws.

Now I'm Starting To Think He Wasn't Supposed To Be My Whole Life, He Was Just This Doorway To Me.

You Can’t Replace People You Love With Other People…but You Can Trust That You’re Not Going To Run Out Of People To Love.

She Is Inhumanly Alone. And Then, All At Once, She Isn't.

He Was My Father. I Own Half His Genes, And All Of His History. Believe This: The Mistakes Are Part Of The Story. I Am Born Of A Man Who Believed He Could Tell Nothing But The Truth, While He Set Down For All Time The Poisonwood Bible.

Patriotism Threatens Free Speech With Death. It Is Infuriated By Thoughtful Hesitation, Constructive Criticism Of Our Leaders And Pleas For Peace. It Despises People Of Foreign Birth. It Has Specifically Blamed Homosexuals, Feminists And The American Civil Liberties Union. In Other Words, The American Flag Stands For Intimidation, Censorship, Violence, Bigotry, Sexism, Homophobia And Shoving The Constitution Through A Paper Shredder. Whom Are We Calling Terrorists Here?

The Substance Of Grief Is Not Imaginary. It's As Real As Rope Or The Absence Of Air, And Like Both Those Things, It Can Kill.

How Strange To Read Of A Place In A Book, And Then Stand On It, Listen To The Birds Sing, And Spit On The Cobbles If You Want.

Maybe He's Been In Africa So Long He Has Forgotten That We Christians Have Our Own System Of Marriage, And It Is Called Monotony.

Households That Have Lost The Soul Of Cooking From Their Routines May Not Know What They Are Missing: The Song Of A Stir-fry Sizzle, The Small Talk Of Clinking Measuring Spoons, The Yeasty Scent Of Rising Dough, The Painting Of Flavors Onto A Pizza Before It Slides Into The Oven.

But Kids Don't Stay With You If You Do It Right. It's The One Job Where, The Better You Are, The More Surely You Won't Be Needed In The Long Run.

Independence Is A Complex Word In A Foreign Tongue. To Resist Occupation, Whether You're A Nation Or Merely A Woman, You Must Understand The Language Of Your Enemy. Conquest And Liberation And Democrac And Divorce Are Words That Mean Squat, Basically, When You Have Hungry Children And Clothes To Get Out On The Line And It Looks Like Rain.

Friends, There Is Nothing Like Your Own Family To Make You Appreciate Strangers!

Alice Wonders If Other Women In The Middle Of The Night Have Begun To Resent Their Formica.

But I've Swallowed My Pride Before, That's For Sure. I'm Practically Lined With My Mistakes On The Inside Like A Bad-wallpapered Bathroom.

The Bad Thing About Small-town Life Is That Everybody Knows Your Business...i Suppose That Is My Central Obsession. What We Owe To Society, What We Owe To Ourselves.

The Thing Is, It's My Own Fault. I Just Can't Put Up With A Person That Won't Go Out Of His Way For Me. And That's What A Man Is. Somebody That Won't Go Out Of His Way For You. I Bet It Says That In The Dictionary.

A Novel Can Educate To Some Extent, But First A Novel Has To Entertain. That's The Contract With The Reader: You Give Me Ten Hours And I'll Give You A Reason To Turn Every Page. I Have A Commitment To Accessibility. I Believe In Plot. I Want An English Professor To Understand The Symbolism While At The Same Time I Want The People I Grew Up With - Who May Not Often Read Anything But The Sears Catalog - To Read My Books.

I Never Think That Anything I'm Writing Is Bluntly Political In Any Way. I'm Not Going For Commentary.

What Life Can I Live That Will Let Me Breathe In And Out And Love Somebody Or Something And Not Run Off Screaming Into The Woods?

Mother Could Go For One Year Without Food, But Not One Day Without Her Lip Sticks.

I Rarely Think Of Poetry As Something I Make Happen; It Is More Accurate To Say That It Happens To Me. Like A Summer Storm, A House Afire, Or The Coincidence Of Both On The Same Day.

Americans Who Read And Think Are Patriots Of The First Order. The Kind Who Know Enough To Roll Their Eyes Whenever Anyone Tries To Claim Sole Custody Of The Flag And Weild It As A Blunt Instrument. There Are As Many Ways To Love America As There Are Americans, And Our Country Needs Us All.

I Look At My Four Boys, Who Are The Colors Of Silt, Loam, Dust, And Clay, An Infinite Palette For Children Of Their Own, And I Understand That Time Erases Whiteness Altogether.

The Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

Few People Know So Clearly What They Want. Most People Can't Even Think What To Hope For When They Throw A Penny In A Fountain.

Small Change, Small Wonders - These Are The Currency Of My Endurance And Ultimately Of My Life.

A Meaningless Phrase Repeated Again And Again Begins To Resemble Truth.

Again And Again

This Forest Eats Itself And Lives Forever.

Food Culture In The United States Has Long Been Cast As The Property Of A Privileged Class. It Is Nothing Of The Kind. Culture Is The Property Of A Species.

There Are People Who Read My Work And Accuse Me Of Being Political! As Far As I'm Concerned That's Like Accusing A Dog Of Having A Bark!

In Kilanga, People Knew Nothing Of Things They Might Have Had - A Frigidaire? A Washer-dryer Combination? Really, They'd Sooner Imagine A Tree That Could Pull Up Its Feet And Go Bake Bread. It Didn't Occur To Them To Feel Sorry For Themselves.

We Came From Bethlehem, Georgia Bearing Betty Crocker Cake Mixes Into The Jungle.

I Prefer To Remain Anomalous.

There Is No Perfect Time To Write. There Is Only Now.

In The Day-to-day, Farm Work Is Stress Relief For Me. At The End Of The Day, I Love Having This Other Career - My Anti-job - That Keeps Me In Shape And Gives Me Control Over A Vegetal Domain.

Does A Man Become A Revolutionary Out Of The Belief He's Entitled To Joy Rather Than Submission?

...nothing Momentous Comes In This World Unless It Comes On The Shoulders Of Kindness.

Codi: Gives You The Willies, Doesn't It? The Thought Of Raising Kids In A Place Where The Front Yard Ends In A Two-hundred-foot Drop? [referring To Cliff Dwellings] Loyd: No Worse Than Raising Up Kids Where The Front Yard Ends In A Freeway.

There's A Graveyard In Northern France Where All The Dead Boys From D-day Are Buried. The White Crosses Reach From One Horizon To The Other. I Remember Looking It Over And Thinking It Was A Forest Of Graves. But The Rows Were Like This, Dizzying, Diagonal, Perfectly Straight, So After All It Wasn't A Forest But An Orchard Of Graves. Nothing To Do With Nature, Unless You Count Human Nature.

A Breeze Shook Rain Out Of New Leaves Onto Their Hair, But In Their Pursuit Of Eternity They Never Noticed The Chill.

I've Always Seen The World Through The Eyes Of A Scientist. I Love The Predictable Outcomes That Science Gives Us, The Control Over The World That That Can Render.

When I Want To Take God At His Word Exactly, I Take A Peep Out The Window At His Creation. Because That, Darling, He Makes Fresh For Us Everyday.

You Can Curse The Dead Or Pray For Them, But Don't Expect Them To Do A Thing For You. They're Far Too Interested In Watching Us, To See What In Heaven's Name We Will Do Next.

Oh, That River Of Wishes, The Slippery Crocodile Dream Of It, How It Might Have Carried My Body Down Through All The Glittering Sand Bars To The Sea.

Once You Start Cooking, One Thing Leads To Another. A New Recipe Is As Exciting As A Blind Date. A New Ingredient, Heaven Help Me, Is An Intoxicating Affair.

Thanks For This Day, For All Birds Safe In Their Nests, For Whatever This Is, For Life.

At Some Point In My Life I'd Honestly Hoped Love Would Rescue Me From The Cold, Drafty Castle I Lived In. But At Another Point, Much Earlier I Think, I'd Quietly Begun To Hope For Nothing At All In The Way Of Love, So As Not To Be Disappointed. It Works. It Gets To Be A Habit.

Tomorrow These Villagers Would Carry Their Secret Icons Into The Church Without Any Priest And Light The Candles Themselves, Moving Together In Single-minded Grace. Like The School Of The Fish, So Driven To Righteousness They Could Flout The Law, Declare The Safety Of Their Souls, Then Go Home And Destroy The Evidence.

There Are Some Who'd Hardly Lift A Finger For Kindness, But They Would Haul Up A Load Of Rock To Dump On Some Soul They Think's Been Too Lucky.

What Keeps Me Awake At The Wheel Is The Thrill Of Trying Something Completely New With Each Book. I’m Not A Risk-taker In Life, Generally Speaking, But As A Writer I Definitely Choose The Fast Car, The Impossible Rock Face, The Free Fall.

Trending Author

Karl Liebknecht

Mireille Mathieu

Category